“I will,” said Alfric. He wondered whether his mother knew that an old friend was working here, and decided that she probably had known. Both his parents had deep connections. And given that this woman ‘just happened’ to be here when she did administration for seven regions of the province, well, Alfric wouldn’t be terribly surprised if this meeting was because of a favor changing hands. Not help, per se, but something like it.
Priya disappeared with a puff of air, and Alfric looked at the book for a moment, then pressed the circle marked ‘Reporter’. The list changed again, this time growing much longer, bleeding onto the next page. It didn’t take Alfric all that long to find Lola’s name, and he flipped to the start of her entries.
“Goin’ right to it?” asked Hannah. “No pretense of lookin’ elsewhere?”
“No,” said Alfric. “In theory, they could all walk through that door at any moment. And if Lola submitted reports already, my guess is that she did it with the intention that I would read them.”
“Why are you reading them if you don’t want to talk to her or any of them?” asked Verity. “It seems to me like you want a clean break.”
Alfric paused and thought about that. “They were my party,” he said. “They were… what I had wanted, what I’d thought I had. I want to see how they’re doing. I want to know.”
“You want to know whether your plan would have worked?” asked Hannah.
“I guess,” said Alfric. He looked down at the page. The words weren’t rendered in Lola’s handwriting, but as he started reading, he could tell that it was her voice.
“We’ll leave you to it,” said Hannah with a sigh. “Verity, would you like to tour this place?”
“Of course,” said Verity. “It will be interesting to see how normal people do things.”
Alfric ignored them. He was already engrossed.
Chapter 36 — E7 Report
Party:
Lola Underhill—alienist, chrononaut, E7
Josen Park—wizard, E7
Grig Tinsmith—bard, E7
Mardin Longshore—cleric of Oeyr, E7
Marsh—warlock, Pyro (delayed service), E7
My favorite tutor when I was growing up was my math teacher, who spent a month of our time talking about variance. Variance is important for chrononauts, part of our bread and butter, but I was deep in the guts of the Junior League at the time (mostly because of a boy), and it’s even more important for dungeoneers. The upshot from that tutor’s lesson was that luck doesn’t exist, and a cold streak doesn’t mean that you’ll keep being cold.
Still, we’re on a cold streak.
At the end of the Pate’s Knob dungeon, Marsh blasted a monster with a jet of fire hot enough to melt rock and destroy anything of value that was behind the creature. We’d been in the dungeon for hours, and he was getting irritated and tired. It was a dumb thing to do, and he knew it. The bad luck for us was that the monster wasn’t just immune to fire, but fed on it. It grew to three times its size and flicked one of its six spindly tendrils out and absolutely destroyed Josen’s left arm. Most of his shoulder went missing with the arm, some of his mage stuff got obliterated, and he lost four entads in the process. Mardin grabbed him by the collar and hefted him out, which left the three of us to face the thing down, and Marsh was useless unless we wanted someone else to lose an arm, or worse. Really, Josen could have died pretty easily. Any of us could have. We did manage to kill the thing and get almost nothing for it, but it was just me, alone, with Grig backing me up on vocals.
After, there was a lot of argument about whether to reset or not. There always is; they just never remember because I’m the one undoing things. Sometimes it’s obvious, like if one of them dies, not that it’s happened much. Other times I need to be convinced. Losing a good entad? That’s a maybe for me. Obviously we’re not bounding through the dungeons for the great view. We’re going to make money, and losing an entad, especially a good one, can throw the whole enterprise in the garbage. In that case, always better to do it over. For Josen though, the four lost entads were piddly crap, ‘irreplaceable’ entads that he’d taken a fancy to. One gave him better finger dexterity, I remember, and I don’t remember what the others did, but they were all minor trinkets, aside from the bracer, which was part of a pair that stopped working. It doubled his strength, but he’s a wizard, and it unfortunately bound to him, which was the only reason he ended up with it.
Mostly they were just complaining because things had gone wrong. They always complain. I made them count up the costs incurred against the winnings and made them do the math, which I always do. Sometimes it comes out in favor of letting it ride, but more often, they call for me to undo. This time, Josen was a bit out of it, mostly upset about the arm thing, with some recriminations and accusations. He wanted the whole dungeon undone, mostly because he thought losing the arm was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. He didn’t appreciate me saying that it was the worst thing he could remember. There was some back-and-forth I won’t get into, but I pointed out that while it could be undone, I was the one putting in more labor. It felt like the twentieth time we’ve had this conversation, and I don’t know how many of those have stuck, but it feels like probably a few. They’ve run nearly fifty dungeons or whatever, but I’ve run closer to eighty. It all just keeps getting undone.
Undoing things is not free! I have to actually live through the day! I’m doing twice the labor!
These reports are supposed to be a place to gripe about your teammates, right?
It’s not like the payout was all that great either. We had thirty rooms total, which stretched us to our limit, and we got fifteen entads, only three of which were any good, and none of which we’re planning to keep. Ectad junk. A handful of eggs. Some seeds. More than enough to pay our way, but not a big contribution to the endgame. The whole team is feeling sour, and they wish that I had undone it, but I’m far more burnt than they are. We handed most of the stuff off to the counterparty and let them deal with it.
We started out with great equipment and a clear plan, and now it’s just a matter of going through the motions. We’ve got enough now that we can live in relative comfort, not that it was ever in question for me. One of the things they don’t talk about in Junior League is how to deal with problems in the party, and half of me wants to go see a cleric about it, though I’ve got no clue which one.
And that was it, all there was for that entry. It was as though Lola had gotten bored halfway through.